The hotly anticipated Sarah Palin news conference in Miami at the Republican Governors conference this morning was a dud. She took four questions and dodged the whole time. Is she only willing to chat in a one-on-one situation?  She certainly had no trouble opening up to Greta, Lauer, Wolf, Larry…

• Seeking to lick their election ‘08 wounds and cobble together a semblance of a comeback plan for their party, Republican governors are huddling in Miami this week for the Republican Governors Association conference. GOP state leaders from across the country have come to south Florida to toss around ideas to improve the future of the Grand Old Party and figure out just what it was that caused them to get whipped - again - in this year’s campaign. The facade may be shiny and optimistic, but the overall mood from the RGA conference is one of gloom and doom with the painful realization that the party will probably need to be completely retooled and re-branded by 2010 or 2012 in order to chip away at Democratic gains. The pervasive worry is that the age of Obama is at hand, and that the GOP is simply out of touch and will be unable to reach the key demographics that have shown such faith and confidence in the president-elect. Adding to the GOP’s concerns in Miami is the infighting that has seeped into the inner sanctum of Republican politics. Sarah Palin’s media blitz to defend herself from angry McCain campaign accusations and rehab her image in time for a 2012 presidential run has rubbed many in the party the wrong way, and those feelings are only barely hidden at the RGA meeting. From “anonymous” whispers about Palin’s antics hurting the party to Tim Pawlenty’s comments - aimed squarely at Palin - that the Alaska Governor’s “drill baby, drill” strategy is short-sighted and needs to be paired with alternatives, the rancor and disgust is palpably thick. Has Palin hijacked the GOP and driving it into the ground for her own personal ambitions?

• The sobering news on the economy continues to hit hard, with today’s jobless numbers showing the largest number of new unemployment filings in 7 years at 516,000. That staggering amount was more than what was forecasted and indicates just how deep the financial and housing crises are cutting into the broader health of the economy. Remember that new claim numbers over 400,000 are generally considered recessionary. Yet we’re still not technically in a recession… The shocking jobs report and the consistently sinking markets may force the hand of Congress to work on the auto bailout, with economists now wondering how an already bleeding economy would handle the bankruptcy at least GM and the massive job losses in several sectors that development would entail. Does this either persuade President bush to scrap a veto or push President-elect Obama to work personally on a new bailout before January?

• TIME gives us a must-read by the excellent Karen Tumulty today in the form of a piece on the Obama transition. It puts the historical importance of the transfer into perspective and notes the “amicable” nature of the move from Bush 43 to Obama 44. Whether it be the gravity of the economic crisis, a world forever changed by 9/11 or just a more professional team than those of Clinton;s last term and Bush’s first, the current process has so far been tidy and has seen amazing levels of cooperation between the two teams. This only serves to raise the expectations for a President Obama even higher…

• The Obama transition team has released the highly anticipated “Plum Book,” the comprehensive guide to job openings in the pending Obama administration. There are around 8,000 government jobs that need to be filled by the Obama team, with most of them included in the infamous book. Washington politicos and qualified Obama fans are snapping up the publication hoping to squeak past the extensive seven-page questionnaire and land a job in the administration of “change.”

• Mounting concerns over the lack of Bush administration oversight and the changing nature of the $700 billion bailout are pushing the Democratic Congress to look into the controversial plan and hold hearings on just how and where the money that Congress freed for the purpose of stemming the housing and financial crises will now be going. Yesterday brought the shocking news that treasury secretary Paulson unilaterally decided to completely shift the focus of the bailout away from buying bad assets  (mortgages) from banks and lenders and instead giving them cash straight-up in exchange for preferred stocks, allowing the institutions to essentially do with the Fed assistance as they please. Conservative anger at the bailout has now spread to the Democratic caucus, with questions about the lack of oversight for the hundreds of billions in taxpayer funds and just why Paulson felt moved to flip-flop on the goals of the plan. Expect the bailout - and not just the fight over auto industry assistance - to be the major story in D.C. for the next two weeks.

• Will the three high-profile Senate races still deemed too close to call be down to one by the beginning of next week? The Alaska contest between convicted felon and GOP incumbent Ted Stevens and Dem challenger Mark Begich has taken a dramatic turn in favor of the Democratic Anchorage mayor. Boosted by a pile of uncounted early and absentee votes, Begich has now taken what appears to be a safe lead of nearly 1,000 votes over Stevens. Nothing is finalized until the state finishes counting nearly 40,000 ballots. Good news for Begich is that the rest of the ballots are, like those that initiated his turnaround, provisional, early or absentee. Looks like the end of the road for Ted Stevens.

Not quite the jobs that most junkies expected her to publicly campaign for, however. In yet another interview with the mainstream media, Palin tells CNN’s Blitzer that she is hopeful that an Obama presidency is successful and that it would be her “honor” to “assist and support our new president” on areas she is knowledgeable in, specifically mentioning energy policy and special needs child care.

The Alaska governor said in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that if Obama asked her for help on some of the issues she highlighted during this year’s campaign, such as energy or services for special-needs children, “It would be my honor to assist and support our new president and the new administration.”

“And I speak for other Republicans and Republican governors, also,” said Palin, whom Sen. John McCain tapped as his running mate in August. “They would be willing also to seize this opportunity that we have to progress this nation together, in a united front.”

Still in some sort of pseudo-campaign mode, Palin did find the time to stop praising Obama and bring up the president-elect’s ties to “unrepentant domestic terrorist” Bill Ayers as a fact that the Alaska Governor is “still concerned” about. Palin was actually quite adamant about the need to explore the whole Ayers thing and vowed that she would “talk about it.”

But asked moments later about some of the tough rhetoric she hurled from the stump, she said she was “still concerned” about Obama’s ties to former Weather Underground member-turned-Chicago college professor William Ayers.

“If anybody still wants to talk about it, I will,” she said. “Because this is an unrepentant domestic terrorist who had campaigned to blow up, to destroy our Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol.

Anyone else awfully confused about Palin’s motives and schizophrenic  messages in her recent blitz of media interviews? Palin demonizes the press as biased and unfair, then she eagerly laps up their ostensibly “negative” attention and gives interview after interview, keeping her name in the news on a relatively favorable basis and knocking the embarrassing revelations from McCain campaign insiders about her behavior during the late campaign.

Palin has found her best bud when it comes to image rehab in the MSM. The press loves juicy exclusives with a somewhat wacky celebrity - Sarah being a political celebrity makes it all the better.

We’ll soon have a much deeper look into the startlingly vicious blood feud that was exploded into the media between the McCain and Palin camps after their humiliating loss on Tuesday. Until then, the various reports leaked and then counter-leaked by the two sides are just too juicy and too entertaining to pass up.

Must-see TV was the spot done by Carl Cameron of Fox News last night on the O’Reilly Factor, where he relayed information given to him by anonymous McCain loyalists that just savaged Palin and her intelligence, saying that she did not know Africa was a continent - not a country - and that she failed to name the signatories to NAFTA - that would be the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Cameron’s reporting on this has been just terrific, with his inside sources in the McCain camp cracking like iced glass over Palin’s supposed antics. Did we mention that she once met campaign strategists for a prep meeting wearing nothing more than a bath towel?

A New York Times article goes further into the sizzling fight. It details the long-running animosity between Palin and her confidantes against the inner circle of John McCain himself. It also sheds more light on what was possibly the most bizarre moment in the presidential campaign…

PHOENIX — As a top adviser in Senator John McCain’s now-imploded campaign tells the story, it was bad enough that Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska unwittingly scheduled, and then took, a prank telephone call from a Canadian comedian posing as the president of France. Far worse, the adviser said, she failed to inform her ticketmate about her rogue diplomacy.

As a senior adviser in the Palin campaign tells the story, the charge is absurd. The call had been on Ms. Palin’s schedule for three days and she should not have been faulted if the McCain campaign was too clueless to notice.

Whatever the truth, one thing is certain. Ms. Palin, who laughingly told the prankster that she could be president “maybe in eight years,� was the catalyst for a civil war between her campaign and Mr. McCain’s that raged from mid-September up until moments before Mr. McCain’s concession speech on Tuesday night. By then, Ms. Palin was in only infrequent contact with Mr. McCain, top advisers said.

In a race where there are still loads - relatively speaking - of undecided voters both nationwide and in the battleground states, any glimmer of late movement among that fabled voting demographic could hold the key to the outcome of today’s election. While the conventional wisdom and secret McCain campaign “internal polls” suggest that McCain will be the chief beneficiary of the late undecideds, a last-minute CBS News poll finds that may not be the case. The culprit for McCain’s potential late-breaking agony? Sarah Palin.

There is evidence that Palin’s presence on the Republican ticket has hurt McCain with some voters. Fourteen percent of Obama’s supporters say they once supported McCain, and the top reason given for their switch was McCain’s selection of Palin as his running mate.

While views of Palin have improved somewhat since last week, she continues fare worse than Biden when it comes to favorability. Today, 37 percent of registered voters have a favorable view of the Alaska governor, while the same percentage have an unfavorable view. Biden is viewed favorably by 43 percent and unfavorably by 21 percent.

These numbers are obviously not solely undecided voters or even voters in swing states. It’s a national poll and the question is so open-ended that the data could be mostly from voters who switched as soon as Palin was put on the ticket.

But that would mean they are most likely Hillary supporters who were initially flirting with backing McCain for the general. These types of working-class independents or even some conservative Democrats were seen as a potential wild card for McCain, breaking late for the GOP ticket in the face of 11th hour skepticism towards Obama and the possible success of the taxes argument featuring “Joe the Plumber.” It was in the dying small towns and old industrial areas of Ohio and Pennsylvania where these votes could come back to bite Obama, with the swing regions of these battlegrounds providing McCain with enough of an advantage to overcome anything but massive turnout in Dem-friendly locales.

Does McCain truly have a path to victory if Palin has already turned away 14% of potential swing voters? This data does not bode well for a campaign banking on en masse late breaks from undecideds.

This is it. No more trail days or campaign rallies or chances to tout your proposals and slash your opponent after today. With Obama sitting somewhat comfortably atop a double-digit national lead, that leaves McCain the task of making up vitally important ground across several battleground states - all in one day.

With that deficit in mind, the McCain campaign is sending the GOP ticket across the country to almost every battleground states imaginable in a furious last-minute blitz to perhaps pick up some momentum and maybe convince enough undecided voters to flip the predicted results from Ohio to Nevada, Florida to Colorado.

Today’s scheduled stops for McCain and Sarah Palin are mind boggling. After a midnight rally in Miami, he went to a raucous event in Tampa before jetting off to East Tennessee (for the VA/NC mountain TV market) and then on to Pennsylvania, Indiana, New Mexico and Nevada. He will of course end the day preparing to head back to Arizona for Election Day.

Palin will be in Ohio, Missouri, Iowa, Colorado and Nevada. She will then board a plane for the long flight back to Anchorage, Alaska, where she will cast her vote tomorrow.

The ticket is obviously covering all of their bases and hitting the usual battlegrounds for this final effort. But it’s interesting to ponder where they are - and aren’t - stopping today.

McCain may be in the VA/NC market in Blountsville, TN, but he isn”t physically in either state. And the play in East Tennessee is for boosting enthusiasm and Election Day turnout among rural white conservatives, not the swing voters of the rest of those two states. Is it overconfidence that he has made up enough ground to ignore these battleground hotbeds and concentrate on base GOTV? Or is it resignation that the only way McCain retains these two red states is with maximum effort from the rural counties he will most certainly carry?

New Mexico and Iowa are generally conceded to Obama given his huge lead in the polls in both states. Yes, Obama did hold that mega-rally in Des Moines last week, but it was really more for nostalgia’s sake. And those cryptic “internal polls” from the McCain campaign that apparently show Mac closing fast in the Hawkeye State have yet to be seen by outsiders.

The last set of Quinnipiac battleground polls for the uber-swing states of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania show virtually no legitimate movement among the numbers for McCain and Obama, with the Dem nominee remaining ahead by varying margins in all three states.

• Florida: Obama at 47 percent to McCain’s 45 percent, unchanged from October 29;
• Ohio: Obama up 50 - 43 percent, compared to 51 - 42 percent last week;
• Pennsylvania: Obama ahead 52 - 42 percent, compared to 53 - 41 percent last week.

Parsing these final numbers finds that Obama has several advantages even as the races do tighten a bit and the McCain campaign touts their own internal polls showing their candidate gaining in key demographics. Obama is way ahead of McCain in Florida and Ohio early voting, has fairly big leads among independents (although a bit smaller than 2-3 weeks ago) and is beating McCain in most important demo’s outside of white voters.

Two specific problem for McCain show up in these Q numbers and in virtually every poll - national or battleground - done since late September. He is getting slaughtered on the economy - which remains the overwhelmingly most important issue for voters - and is getting dragged down due to spiking unfavorables for running mate Sarah Palin. The most generous of the numbers have her favorables at a 45-45 split. That is much worse than Joe Biden’s numbers and far below McCain and Obama favorability data.

Last note on the economy: According to Q, even Pennsylvania voters, bombarded by “Joe the Plumber” and McCain’s attacks on higher taxes and “spread the wealth,”  say by a 53% to 40% margin that Obama is the best candidate to handle the economy. Mac has a good argument, it’s just that voters are already tuned out.

• The final days of the race will see wide-ranging advertising displays and grass roots efforts from the two campaigns (mostly from Obama), but the ground effort by the actual tickets will be strictly and expertly focused on only the biggest of battleground states. Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania are being swarmed by the members of both the Democratic and Republican tickets both today and into the weekend. While Biden and Palin converge on the Sunshine State over the weekend (after Palin hits Pennsylvania today), McCain is trekking across Ohio on a major bus tour and Obama is kicking off a chaotic schedule that send him to events in states from Iowa and Indiana today to Ohio on Sunday - with a three-state, Nevada to Colorado to Missouri swing thrown in on Saturday. All presidential campaigns end up coming down to either one or a handful of uber-important states - the trio described above appears to be the version for 2008. The time spent on the ground and the ad money being thrown at undecided voters in these states is truly incredible. Don;t expect it to cool off even as we rapidly tick away the clock towards Election Day.

• Are we about to see a major ad push in the final days of the race from the McCain campaign? McCain campaign manager Rick Davis confirmed the swirling rumors that both the RNC and their own campaign will essentially throw the kitchen sink in TV ads at Obama in this last frenetic run-up to Tuesday. There had been indications that the last reserves of available cash from the Republican Party and McCain would be used in some sort of last-ditch ground or advertising push; now we know which it will be. Davis hinted that the campaign would even outspend the Obama machine on ads overall in the last week of the race, possibly creating a new spot for the last weekend - although most likely the campaign doesn’t have enough cash or time to create any flashy new ads. Will there be any true last-minute surprises tossed about from the GOP or McCain in this final ad blitz? Will voters hear nothing but the “S” word - socialism?

• Obama’s campaign schedule today had him in Des Moines, Iowa for a big rally in what had been pointed to as a key battleground states as recently as last month. But weeks of polls and McCain trending way down had allowed most pundits and election trackers to scratch Iowa off of the battleground list and give it to Obama. So Obama’s Iowa rally immediately raised questions as to why the campaign would spend valuable time - the last Friday before Election Day - on a state that is considered something of a Dem lock? Nothing substantial will probably come of this, but the parsing and predictions are flying today, with rumors of startling gains for McCain in Obama’s internal polls and final worries about complacency and maybe even the Bradley effect.May not mean anything, but the stop does warrant a raised eyebrow or two.

• Going for the kill or a dangerous waste of money and a risk of over-extension? Those are the questions surrounding another ponderous decision from the Obama campaign made public today. Campaign mastermind David Plouffe told reporters that the campaign is buying ad slots in the very red states of Arizona, Georgia and North Dakota - AZ of course being McCain’s home state and the other two states reliably red and even now seen as out of reach for Obama. Beating back doubters, Plouffe called these three states in the “realm of possibility” to win and promised “extra effort” in the final days. No need to force McCain to defend red turf with less than a week until the election, and the polls in the three are mostly pro-McCain- although Obama is running much stronger than Dem candidates in the past.

• Scratch off one major voting demographic that the Obama campaign doesn’t have to fret over these last few days. Hispanic voters are overwhelmingly supporting Obama in the race despite initial fears from Democrats that their die-hard support for Hillary Clinton in the primaries - and potential racial tensions - would severely dampen Obama’s lure among Hispanics in the key Western battlegrounds. Obama is winning Hispanics on the economy and immigration, with voters skeptical that McCain will be able to handle the economic crisis and worried that he will cave to anti-immigrant Republicans and crack down on illegal immigration.

The lead is still very strong and well over 10 points for Barack Obama in the latest Newsweek national poll. Obama is ahead of McCain 53% to 40% with less than two weeks until Election Day.

Demo by demo it looks very good for Obama. He is now leading in every age and class group - even over-65 and working-class whites. Obama’s favorable number continues to shoot up, eclipsing 60% in the new poll  while his unfavorable number is down at 32%. And Sarah Palin is hurting McCain, encumbering the GOP nominee with a running mate who is universally disliked by most voters.

There are concerns for Obama and silver linings for McCain in Newsweek. The McCain campaign attack line about “Joe the Plumber” and the potential for huge tax increases on small businesses under Obama has made an impression with both working-class and middle-class voters.

McCain’s attempt to raise anxiety about Obama’s economic policies—with his relentless focus on Joe the Plumber and his suggestion that an Obama presidency could usher in an era of socialism—seems to have had some effect with working-class voters. In the poll, 39 percent of working-class and poor whites said they would list as a major concern the fear that Obama’s tax plans could hurt small business. The McCain attacks seem to have had a larger impact with middle class and high-income voters, 48 percent of whom deem Obama’s tax policies a major concern.

But Obama is still leading both of those voter groups overall, despite obvious skepticism over the “spreading the wealth” controversy. McCain’s running mate and his inability to handle the economy are more impressive drags on his poll numbers than any of the “Joe” attacks are on Obama.

• Obama is now officially off the campaign trail for two days as he travels to Hawaii for what could be his last visit with his ailing grandmother. Obama’s campaign announced the suspension earlier this week after word came from family members that 85-year0old Madelyn Dunham was taking a turn from the worse after apparently breaking her hip recently. Details are limited on the exact length and nature of the Hawaii trip, but the campaign has said Obama will be spending “personal time” with his grandmother before leaving Honolulu later on Friday local time. It then appears Obama will immediately head back on the trail for Saturday. hitting unannounced swing states in something resembling another “economy tour.” Ramifications of Obama’d departure from the mainland must be judged after the trip, but the move comes at an awkward time as the McCain campaign continues to hammer Obama on taxes and a new AP national poll has McCain gaining six points to put himself nearly even with Obama with under two weeks left in the race. (But we think that poll is an unreliable outlier…)

• Michelle Obama is picking up the slack as her husband jets of to Hawaii. She will be campaigning in Ohio today with events in Akron and Columbus.

• The Obama campaign’s massive and unprecedented money machine has been so successful at stockpiling money that they have released around $4 million for use by state Democratic parties in key swing states. The money, coming out of Obama’s original presidential campaign fund - meaning it’s besides the specific state party PAC’s Obama already funds - will be handed out to the states for use in GOTV efforts and for state and local races. This is $4 mil that will directly to electing new Democratic Senators and Congressman to build Obama’s hoped-for Democratic super-majority on Capitol Hill.

• The Colin Powell endorsement has helped Obama significantly among independents according to Washington Post analysis.

• Taking refuge in a state that has helped him rise from the political dead on two different occasions, John McCain made a stop in New Hampshire yesterday and made his most basic and desperate plea yet to supporters, telling crowds in the Granite State “don’t give up hope” on his campaign. McCain went on to say that he “loves New Hampshire,” remembering some of his “happiest, happiest memories” came in the state, clearly remembering his underdog triumphs in the GOP primaries of 2000 and 2008. But the general election is not a primary, and this race is about much more than the tiny Granite State. Even here, McCain has bee losing ground for months and is seen as fighting a losing battle with Obama for New Hampshire independents and swing voters. Many of those voters have been part of McCain’s loyal base in his two primary wins. But support has eroded for the GOP nominee in the face of what many moderates see as an unfortunate shift to the right and a borderline sleazy campaign, running dishonest and unfair attacks on Obama - the kind of stuff McCain was fighting against in his primary victories.

• McCain was all over the trail yesterday, jetting off to Cincinnati after his New Hampshire event. There the McCain-Palin team crafted new catchphrases and offered up more “Joe the Plumber”-types to attack Obama as a foe to aspiring entrepreneurs and a typical tax-and-spend liberal candidate. Sarah Palin introduced Obama as “Barack the wealth spread” to resounding cheers from campaign supporters, delivering a new anti-Obama line that has been used multiple times already today in McCain press releases to hit the Dem nominee for his rather unfortunate description of a facet of his economic policy. McCain-Palin also used the Ohio event to introduce more Joe-style characters to the world, including “Tito the Builder” and Pam the Republican Teacher.” This is all in an effort to script the race as a battle over ideology, not specific plans. The McCain campaign just wants to stir up even a sprinkling of doubt in swing voters who have moved into the Obama camp after September’s economic crisis. “Joe” got plenty of attention and may have stopped the GOP bleeding in the polls; why not more like him?